Tag: taxes

Federal security grants to US synagogues to resume after two-month Trump freeze

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency has lifted a freeze on security funding for religious institutions this week, ending a months-long pause that drew alarm from Jewish groups that had advocated for expanded federal security funding.

The Nonprofit Security Grant Program provides funding for synagogues, schools and Jewish community centers to pay for security measures to protect their buildings from attack. Congress provided $274.5 million for the program in 2025.

Reimbursement payments to participating institutions were halted in March as part of an overall funding freeze on FEMA, the federal disaster relief agency. At the time, nearly 80 members of Congress from both parties signed a letter urging the Trump administration to reverse course.

Nechamia Dsatmar on October 13, 2023. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

JTA — The US Federal Emergency Management Agency has lifted a freeze on security funding for religious institutions this week, ending a months-long pause that drew alarm from Jewish groups that had advocated for expanded federal security funding.

The Nonprofit Security Grant Program provides funding for synagogues, schools and Jewish community centers to pay for security measures to protect their buildings from attack. Congress provided $274.5 million for the program in 2025.

Reimbursement payments to participating institutions were halted in March as part of an overall funding freeze on FEMA, the federal disaster relief agency. At the time, nearly 80 members of Congress from both parties signed a letter urging the Trump administration to reverse course.00:20 / 37:55

That appears to have happened this week, Jewish Insider reported on Friday, citing an email sent by Jewish Federations of North America to its member federations.

“Nonprofit Security Grant Program funds are essential to keeping our communities safe, especially amid rising antisemitism,” Karen Paikin Barall, the Jewish Federations of North America vice president for government relations, said in an emailed statement. “We are relieved that the government’s review process has concluded and that funds will now be released, allowing nonprofits to be reimbursed for critical security investments they’ve already made.”

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Administrator Kelly Loeffler Announces Full-Scale Audit of SBA 8(a) Program After DOJ Finds Over $550 Million in Contracts Linked to Bribery and Fraud Scheme

A USAID official and three government contractors pleaded guilty to a decade-long bribery scheme involving over $550 million in contracts, according to the Justice Department.

According to court documents, beginning in 2013, USAID contracting officer Roderick Watson agreed with corporate executive Darryl Britt to receive bribes in exchange for Watson’s influence to award contracts to a small business named Apprio and its subcontractor Vistant.

Watson received more than $1 million in bribes to steer no-bid contracts to Apprio and Vistant.

Wilson and Britt used the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) contracting program, which helps ‘socially and economically disadvantaged businesses’ bid on contracts, to make this massive scheme possible.

Per the DOJ:

Four men, including a government contracting officer for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and three owners and presidents of companies, have pleaded guilty for their roles in a decade-long bribery scheme involving at least 14 prime contracts worth over $550 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars.

  • Roderick Watson, 57, of Woodstock, Maryland, who worked as a USAID contracting officer, pleaded guilty to bribery of a public official;
  • Walter Barnes, 46, of Potomac, Maryland, who was the owner and president of PM Consulting Group LLC doing business as Vistant (Vistant), a certified small business under the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) 8(a) contracting program, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official and securities fraud;
  • Darryl Britt, 64, of Myakka City, Florida, who was the owner and president of Apprio, Inc. (Apprio), a certified small business under the SBA 8(a) contracting program, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official; and
  • Paul Young, 62, of Columbia, Maryland, who was the president of a subcontractor to Vistant and Apprio, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery of a public official.

On Friday, Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration announced the SBA will perform a full-scale audit of the 8(a) race-based contracting program.

Loeffler released this statement Friday.

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US Terminating All Trade Talks With Canada Over New Tax on US Tech Firms

President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the United States is halting all trade negotiations with Canada due to Ottawa’s decision to implement a new tax on American tech companies.

“We have just been informed that Canada… has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” the US president added.

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NYC Mayoral Candidate Mamdani: Tax Whites and the Rich

Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is not shy about playing race and class cards in his campaign platform proposal to hike property taxes for “richer and whiter neighborhoods.”

Calling it a “soak-the-rich” proposal, the New York Post described the platform as an effort to fix the city’s “notoriously skewed property tax system,” where high-end brownstones are assessed at lower rates than homes and rentals in lower-income neighborhoods.

The race-based language is contained in Mamdani’s extensive “Stop the Squeeze on NYC Homeowners” campaign material.

It promises that a Mamdani administration will:

Shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods: The property tax system is unbalanced because assessment levels are artificially capped, so homeowners in expensive neighborhoods pay less than their fair share. The Mayor can fix this by pushing class assessment percentages down for everyone and adjusting rates up, effectively lowering tax payments for homeowners in neighborhoods like Jamaica and Brownsville while raising the amount paid in the most expensive Brooklyn brownstones.

The Post account acknowledged that “Democrats and many Republicans have long pushed to fix the out-of-whack system that ends up hitting poorer, often largely black and brown neighborhoods, with higher property taxes than their neighbors in swanky areas that tend to be majority Caucasian.”

But the candidate’s language drew fire from conservative critics.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon threatened to investigate Zohran Mamdani over his proposal to tax ‘whiter neighborhoods’  if he becomes the mayor, calling race-based policies “illegal.”

One former northeast resident, now a Florida-based commentator, called the candidate a “racist” on X.

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Former NY DEI Director and Hochul Aide Linda Sun CHARGED in Multimillion-Dollar PPE Fraud and Kickback Scheme

While New Yorkers were gasping for N-95 masks and latex gloves in the dark spring of 2020, the woman once tasked with “diversity, equity & inclusion” inside the Hochul-Cuomo political machine was allegedly busy funneling state contracts to her own relatives—and pocketing the profits.

The Gateway Pundit reported last year that the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid on the $3.5 million Long Island home.

The lavish five-bedroom home, located in a gated community called Stone Hill in Long Island, was searched thoroughly by agents, though it remains undisclosed whether any items were seized during the operation.

A federal grand jury has returned a second superseding indictment against Linda Sun, former Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for New York and later Deputy Chief of Staff to Gov. Kathy Hochul, along with her husband Christopher “Chris” Hu.

Prosecutors say the pair raked in more than $8 million in kickbacks, bribes and laundered cash by steering COVID-19 personal-protective-equipment (PPE) contracts to companies run by Sun’s cousin and Hu’s business partner.

The new counts include honest-services wire fraud, conspiracy, bribery, money-laundering, and—just for good measure—tax evasion for Hu. Arraignment is set for Monday, June 30 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

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Big Data Centers Are Booming, But Secret Deals Draw Local Opposition

From Georgia to Oregon, New England to New Mexico, data center projects are drawing opposition in local government hearings by residents concerned about the voracious demand for electricity, water consumption, and noise. Critics also argue that data centers don’t produce the jobs other land uses generate.

In Texas, people in small towns question data center development in the broader context of rapid rural industrialization.

In Pennsylvania, ad hoc groups say data centers are tapping into nearby natural gas fields, increasing the frequency of fracking, and straining water supplies.

In Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and across the country, residents say the scale and proximity of these high-tech campuses degrade their neighborhoods and devalue properties.

Objections vary, depending on proposal and site, but a common complaint is state and local governments offering data center projects tax incentives that are often shielded from public scrutiny through nondisclosure agreements.

Companies say these pacts shield proprietary corporate intelligence, but the perceived lack of transparency fosters suspicion and anger when residents realize local planners are set to approve a proposal they knew little to nothing about until it appeared to be a done deal.

“Just from our experience, it seems like one of the big concerns is that, yeah, there is no community outreach,” Kamil Cook, Public Citizen’s Texas climate and clean energy associate, told the Epoch Times. “There’s no method by which the community can be informed in a way that actually makes it seem like their voice is valued and that they have a choice in these matters.”

Much of this local opposition appears rooted in the complaint that people “weren’t informed to begin with, were ignored at some point,” said Joe Warnimont, who co-authored a February HostingAdvice.com survey. The survey of 800 people in 16 states found that 93 percent agreed that “cutting-edge AI data centers are vital to the United States,” but only 35 percent want one in their town.

“The main insights are there is clearly a disconnect between what the local residents experience and what is being sold to these communities from developers,” Warnimont told The Epoch Times.

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Zohran Mamdani Wants to Spend $65 Million on ‘Gender Affirming Care’ – Including for Minors

Zohran Mamdani, the Muslim communist that just won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, wants to spend $65 million on ‘gender affirming care’ including for minors. In case you’re not aware, gender affirming care is a term that means butchering the otherwise healthy body parts of a person in order to ‘transition.’

This was one of the issues that came up repeatedly in the 2024 election and the American people made their opinion quite clear. Most people are against this. It’s one of the 80/20 issues that have come up repeatedly in recent months.

Mamdani is choosing the 20 percent side of this issue, which should surprise absolutely no one.

The New York Post reported:

Zohran Mamdani wants to spend $65M on trans medical treatment — including for minors — if elected NYC mayor

Mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani wants to spend $65 million in taxpayer funds on transgender treatment — including for minors — if he’s elected to lead New York City…

About $57 million would be allotted for public hospitals, community clinics, federally qualified health centers and nonprofits with another $8 million for more expanded services, the website states.

The surging Democratic socialist contender first unveiled his plan to “deliver care, opportunity, and protection for LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers” last month following a Trans Community Town Hall with advocates…

Mamdani defended the spending plan as necessary, citing how private Big Apple hospitals had stopped providing gender-affirming care for minors under threats from the Trump administration earlier this year.

“LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers are under attack by the Trump administration and Zohran is going to stand up for them as Mayor,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement to The Post on Monday.

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RFK Jr. Axes ALL Funding for Bill Gates’ Global ‘Vaccine Alliance’

Whereas the general modus operandi in legacy media is to smear RFK Jr. as an “anti-vaxxer” within the first sentence, the Washington Post courteously waited until the second paragraph to label RFK Jr. a “vaccine misinformation” spreader on its way to condemning him for cutting federal funding to Bill Gates’ global “vaccine alliance,” GAVI.

Via Washington Post (emphasis added):

The United States will halt its contributions to Gavi, the global alliance that works to expand access to vaccines for children in some of the world’s poorest countries, said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wednesday — a move that public health experts said would have deadly consequences.

Kennedy, who has a history of spreading vaccine misinformation, announced the decision in video remarks made to a Gavi summit in Brussels, during which he accused the group of neglecting “the key issue of vaccine safety.”…

In his remarks, Kennedy cited a study linking the DTP vaccine — for diphtheria, a highly contagious bacterial infection that kills 5 to 10 percent of those affected, as well as tetanus and pertussis — to increased child mortality. Kennedy also said Gavi should “consider the best science available,” and “re-earn the public trust.”

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Supreme Court Greenlights States to Cut Off Medicaid Funding for Planned Parenthood in Major Win for Pro-Life Advocates

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday paved the way for states to block Medicaid funding from going to abortion giant Planned Parenthood.

The high court’s decision, which comes after years of legal wrangling, affirms the authority of individual states to determine how taxpayer dollars are allocated — and who gets excluded.

In a landmark 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic that individual Medicaid recipients do not have the right to sue states under federal law for excluding abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs.

The Court’s decision, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, reversed a ruling from the Fourth Circuit and solidified the state of South Carolina’s authority to remove Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid network—without fear of federal lawsuits from individual patients or abortion activists cloaking themselves in civil rights statutes.

This case arose after South Carolina decided in 2018 to terminate Planned Parenthood’s participation in its Medicaid program, citing a state law that bans the use of public funds for abortion.

Abortion advocates predictably sued under 42 U.S.C. §1983, claiming the state violated a supposed “right” under the Medicaid Act’s “any-qualified-provider” provision.

Justice Gorsuch clarified that this provision does not confer individually enforceable federal rights. It is a directive to states, not a free pass for left-wing groups to weaponize the courts every time a state takes a stand for life.

“The decision whether to let private plaintiffs enforce a new statutory right poses delicate questions of public policy. New rights for some mean new duties for others. And private enforcement actions, meritorious or not, can force governments to direct money away from public services and spend it instead on litigation,” Gorsuch wrote.

He continued, “The job of resolving how best to weigh those competing costs and benefits belongs to the people’s elected representatives, not unelected judges charged with applying the law as they find it.” 

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US Space Force Requests $277M for MILNET, Halts Tranche 3 of Transport Layer

The U.S. Space Force’s fiscal 2026 budget request provides $277 million for the MILNET proliferated Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation and halts funding for the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 3, Transport Layer effort for advanced LEO communications satellites.

The Space Force $277 million request combines two program elements and derives from a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) classified MILNET effort, based on SpaceX‘s Starshield. The Department of the Air Force, which is conducting an Analysis of Alternatives on future satellite communications, intends MILNET to be a “plug and play” architecture that is not SpaceX-reliant.

“In the FY 26 budget we learned DoD is halting the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 3, Transport Layer and that work which has been going on for several years and had robust competition and open standards has been replaced by something called MILNET, which is being sole sourced to SpaceX,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, said at a Thursday hearing on the Department of the Air Force’s fiscal 2026 funding request.

“No competition, no open architecture, no leveraging of dynamic space ecosystem,” Coons said of MILNET.

Coons then asked Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, “Doesn’t handing this to SpaceX make us dependent on their proprietary technology and avoid the very positive benefits of competition and open architecture?

“Tranche 2 is still funded in the budget submission, including the Transport Layer, so we’re looking forward to delivery of that system over the next handful of years,” Meink responded. “As we go forward, MILNET, the term, should not be taken as just a system. How we field that going forward is something that’s still under consideration, and we will look at the acquisition of that.”

Coons then said that he would “deeply appreciate a classified briefing” from Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman “on exactly where this [MILNET] is going and why this particular decision was made.”

SDA has extensively publicized the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), including the communications and missile warning satellite constellations.

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